...the story I most want to tell—and one I have never heard—is of abortion as an intimate part of a couple’s life together. Our abortion was a love story. I’d worried that Walter and I were rejecting a gift from the universe. What I discovered, though, was that when we stripped away the distractions of everyday life so that we could make this difficult decision together, it bound us together as surely as if our choice had been different—and as it turns out, that was the gift.Every once in awhile their story returns to me. I often don't know why it stumbles into my brain and says, "Hey! Ponder me!" but it does. This morning it returned to me yelling, "Why?!"
I was half-listening to WBEZ's 848 and some story about a man running away from his life. Original, I know. But what hooked my brain to jolt me from my grant writing was a line about how when he was 22 his girlfriend got pregnant. The story begins with him recalling how happy his girlfriend just was, despite her belief that she wouldn't had been happy. Then he runs off in the car and comments about how if he just admitted that he didn't want the baby there would be an abortion and "well, that would be the end."
I'm taking that line to mean that would be the end of their relationship. See, that's where Alison & her husband come in. Why? Why would having an abortion mean the end of a relationship? Are Alison & her husband the only couple to abort a pregnancy (not for medical reasons anyway) and remained in love? I just don't believe it.
Are we socialized to believe that despite study after study saying that women overwhelmingly feel relief after an abortion, that two adults in love must break up? That having an abortion dooms their romance? The story on 848 ends without conclusion about the pregnancy, so I have no idea what happened. What if he returned and confessed his true feelings and she admitted that she felt the same way? Alison seemed to have talked herself into wanting to carry the pregnancy to term, but realized it wasn't the right decision.
Doing a web search for abortion stories, I ran across this story of a married couple with children who chose to abort and she's at peace with her decision. At the Feminist Women's Health Center's website, there are story after story of women who had abortions. Some stories are of women who stayed with the man, as one woman put it, "who fathered the child who was not to be."
This leads me back to the question from two years ago: Can abortion be a part of a love story? I still think it can.
On Glee, what if Quinn had decided to have an abortion? Would that had given her some honest time to strengthen her relationship with Finn? Or would that have driven him into the arms of Rachel sooner? I'm sure there are other and perhaps better what-ifs in pop culture, but seriously, what if an abortion was what saved a relationship instead of dooming it to be feel like a forced marriage? Allowing the characters to reexamine their lives and move on together?
Now who's brave enough to let us see that relationship blossom after a sunny morning at the local abortion clinic?
Um, yeah...here's example #36,423 of "I think too hard."